Using scapegoats is great if you are not the scapegoat.

Psychologically, what you do is project your painful reaction to a life event onto another poor soul and then make sure they are punished appropriately for it. It leaves a nice satisfied feeling in your stomach, until the problem returns and the cycle starts again, at which point you find someone new to do it to.

When done in a small group we call it ‘bullying’. In large organizations we call it ‘blame culture’. Between countries is often a reason for war. As an individual, you can only keep an eye on it personally, but will you know when it is happening to you, and will you recognize and accept what must be done to prevent it?

Scapegoating is the act of creating a ‘scapegoat’ that we tie to the ground for a predator to eat, giving the rest of us time to escape; what was once a tribal survival tactic is now deeply ingrained in human social behavior.

Wonderful method as long as you’re not the scapegoat, huh? But there is also another twist to this story. In their defense, the older generations developed a way to get the younger, fitter members of our tribes to join in on the privilege, too: we call it heroism.

I’m not bashing heroism; I’m just saying that you have to be careful that you’re not acting like the hero in a situation where you don’t fully understand what’s going on.

Heroes sacrifice for the greater good. This is fine as long as you survive the sacrifice opportunity (ie you kill the beast or the beast is pacified in some other way) you get some of that greater good for yourself.

What if, having sacrificed a large part of your life or risked your life for a while, you find that the ‘greater good’ is not what you yourself receive from those for whom you took this risk? You need to pay attention to this and make sure you stop offering yourself as a sacrificial lamb if it is a person or a group of people who do not want the same good things for you that they want for themselves after the ‘beast’ is vanquished. .

In many dysfunctional families, for example, the beast is the norm of behavior for the family itself.

To prevent each individual family member from having to deal with the pain of their own inner world, aggressive families sometimes attach a ‘black sheep’. Seen as the worst member of the family, they then blame that person for all of her problems, thereby avoiding facing the predator within (her painful feelings for him). The scapegoat gets a reward from this process by making him feel very important; if he is not notorious. They get lots and lots of attention from this process, which is better than the lack of attention they got before.

I remember a couple of years ago working with a young man where the rest of the family would come (two full generations plus aunts and uncles) and they would all talk about their concerns about him. As they talked, the family members criticized each other for the way they treated him and past arguments were brought up in front of him. Dazzling eyes, quick comments, the complete works. You would have thought he was on the verge of a future violent criminal.

The young man himself sat passively, answered questions intelligently (although according to the family he was a bit moody and unpredictable) and when I talked to him alone, he was very easy to get along with. He had become the eye of the family storm: he was the family scapegoat.

This kind of thing can go on for years and eventually, if you are the scapegoat, you can start to believe the hype on an unconscious level. Here’s what to do if this happens to you:

Go out.

You will not find this easy.

The first reason is because it can mean months of unpleasant planning in several different areas: financially; logistically; legally. It could take years to just move out (the young man I talked about earlier left his family a few months later).

The second reason it can be difficult is because when they realize the scapegoat has escaped, other members of the group want the scapegoat back and will go after it.

Scapegoats can be useful for a number of reasons: they tend to be generous to people, and as such are quite useful financially and in other ways; they are big absorbent punching bags who love to take full responsibility for getting hit (heroes).

I have seen many people, of all different age groups and types, play the scapegoat role and become emotionally ill for it.

In their heads they justify this treatment with internal dialogues such as: ‘they don’t know what they’re doing’ or ‘someday they’ll understand’ or ‘they didn’t really mean that’.

they know exactly what they are doing. You are the one who does not understand. They mean everything they say, you’re just not listening. Still here?

What a great person you are, huh? Hello scapegoat.